SUPER DUKE MEETS A REAL DUKE!

03.12.2013
/ Creado por Luke Brackenbury

Motorcycle Live, held at Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre on November 23 – December 1, is the UK’s premier biking show and KTM UK attends it every year in full force and welcomed a special visitor: HRH Prince William checked out the latest range of KTMs at Motorcycle Live.

This year’s show gave riders their first chance to see the full 2014 KTM range, including the 1290 SUPER DUKE R, RC 125 and RC 390 for the first time in Britain. The KTM stand was always packed and along with the display and demo bikes, comedian Ross Noble and former Dakar racer, Patsy Quick attended ‘Dirt Day’ to speak about their passion for off-road riding and Jeremy McWilliams joined the orange team during the week to explain more about the 1290 SUPER DUKE R.

But on the final Saturday of the nine-day event, the KTM stand was visited by a man second in line to the British monarchy; Prince William – the Duke of Cambridge. Although KTM was not scheduled to be on his tour of the show, the future King of England is a petrolhead and wanted to see what the Austrian brand had to offer.

His tour guide was KTM UK’s Area Manager South, Chris Bexon, and he explains the special visit: “Everyone the Prince visited was given a briefing document beforehand, such as how to address him – but with two minutes notice of his visit I didn’t get that! William greeted me with a firm handshake and launched into questions about our brand. I was impressed with his great knowledge of KTM’s motorsport prowess in the Dakar Rally and Moto3."

“The Prince also knew of the 125 DUKE and I explained how important and successful this bike had been for KTM to reach a new and younger audience of riders and that the RC models would continue and expand that. He asked what the new models were and then I took him over to the 1290 SUPER DUKE R and reeled off a few of the headline performance figures – I think he was impressed", Bexon added.

“From then we went over to the 1190 ADVENTURE R and the Duke then made some comments about how good the designs of the machines are. We didn’t get the chance to have a look at the off-road machines on display, but it was an honour to meet him and someone who clearly loves his bikes”, he described his impression of the Duke.